Hello community! Pursuant to my balance survey , I've put together a package of suggested changes to improve the health of the game. Some are small, sensible, and crowd-sourced, others are larger and more controversial, reinforcing my perceptions of design intent and unit theme. This thread is meant to be a place to share playtest experience more than suggestions for ways to change units, but I'm not a cop, follow your heart.

I am concerned that I'm trying for too many changes all at once, but I feel pretty strongly about them all. Outside of Latari, any given list is likely to encounter one or two of them, plus the blanket change to terrain, so I feel it should be manageable.

Realistically, we need an impossible amount of feedback to get a real sense of certification for any changes, but I'll take whatever you feel like giving me! As a rough guideline, here's a format to help figure things out:

Army List #1:

Army List #2:

Deployment and Scenario used:

Something that really stood out by performing well:

Something that really stood out by performing poorly:

General impressions:

I have a tracking sheet far enough along that I can probably at least get people entering values. The data analysis side is pretty bare yet. Just tables showing score distributions overall and against specific factions. Nothing granular yet.

I’m going to see if I can set up a submission form for people to fill out that can auto populate into the sheet

I’m excited to test some of these changes. I noticed a lot of people complained about Kari. Did you feel she was balanced enough? I feel like she’s ok from my point of view but my opponents usually complain

53 minutes ago, Glucose98 said:

I’m excited to test some of these changes. I noticed a lot of people complained about Kari. Did you feel she was balanced enough? I feel like she’s ok from my point of view but my opponents usually complain

Only 25% of people responded that she was overpowered. One problem with the survey, as shown, is that the bar graphs had different scales on them. Kari's 11 out of 50 responses showed as large a bar as it did because Daqan's 'overpowered' list had a scale of 20, as opposed to 30 or 40 for most of the other graphs.

I'm less certain that Vorun'thul should have shown up as needing tweaking. With 20 votes out of 50 for 'overpowered', that's not even a majority, let alone an overwhelming one. And how did that end up being 48.8%? It should be 40%. And even if there's some wonky stuff going on, Reanimates had 21 votes for 'underperforming', which shows as 45.7%.

Edit: hang on, 11 votes out of 50 should show as 22%. Can you tell what's going on with the percentages shown? And maybe combine the graphs so that they show all the units together, then sort by number of votes, so we can get a better comparison?

46 minutes ago, Glucose98 said:

I’m excited to test some of these changes. I noticed a lot of people complained about Kari. Did you feel she was balanced enough? I feel like she’s ok from my point of view but my opponents usually complain

I do think she's too strong (or at least too polar ), but not a high enough priority to worry about at this stage. Ultimately I'd like to make her more mobile to reflect her being a scout on foot (free reform after march or shift seems good) in exchange for power from her less interactive knife throwing (reduce range to 1-3 for a start). Shooting at I2 is such a uniquely powerful ability.

3 minutes ago, Xelto said:

Only 25% of people responded that she was overpowered. One problem with the survey, as shown, is that the bar graphs had different scales on them. Kari's 11 out of 50 responses showed as large a bar as it did because Daqan's 'overpowered' list had a scale of 20, as opposed to 30 or 40 for most of the other graphs.

I'm less certain that Vorun'thul should have shown up on the list. With 20 votes out of 50 for 'overpowered', how did that end up being 48.8%? It should be 40%. And even if there's some wonky stuff going on, Reanimates had 21 votes for 'underperforming', which shows as 45.7%.

Not everyone responded to every question. It says how many did below each question - 44 responded to Daqan overperforming, 45 to underperforming, etc. Oddly, no single question has 50 responses.

1 minute ago, Bhelliom said:

Not everyone responded to every question. It says how many did below each question - 44 responded to Daqan overperforming, 45 to underperforming, etc. Oddly, no single question has 50 responses.

Fair enough. Can we get the graphs combined and the units sorted by descending percent of votes, so it's easier to see them in relation to the others?

2 hours ago, Glucose98 said:

I’m excited to test some of these changes. I noticed a lot of people complained about Kari. Did you feel she was balanced enough? I feel like she’s ok from my point of view but my opponents usually complain

Kari is an interesting case. One of my good friends across the country played her for a long time and was utterly convinced of her power and great success. The locals have done okay with her, but I'm often killing her. So their conclusion is that she's not very good. Just depends upon who plays what in your area and their relative strengths.

Luke,

First of all, thanks for taking your personal time to put together the survey and suggest some well-thought changes. I particularly enjoyed reading your rationale behind the changes. It’s so coindicental as we played tonight and I had Kari, some scouts, 2-3x1 Crossbows with Rank and Wind Rune, and a 2x1 Golem.

Here’s how the changes would have affected our game:

1) The points difference would have been a net increase of 2 points effectively removing my 2 point bid. Any further points increase in the Crossbowmen would have forced me to remove an upgrade somewhere else.

2) My bid allowed me to choose the scenario, ignoring one that would have been disastrous for me.

3) We called the game after 7 turns. During that time, we had 2 turns with 2 green runes. One of those turns was early in the game when the Golems weren’t engaged. The one turn I was engaged, I rolled two hits with 4 threat, didn’t need the re-roll

I will file a report in Church’s spreadsheet to help collect data.

Thanks again for your efforts...

Here’s my list for those interested.

1 hour ago, sarumanthewhite said:

Here’s how the changes would have affected our game:

1) The points difference would have been a net increase of 2 points effectively removing my 2 point bid. Any further points increase in the Crossbowmen would have forced me to remove an upgrade somewhere else.

2) My bid allowed me to choose the scenario, ignoring one that would have been disastrous for me.

3) We called the game after 7 turns. During that time, we had 2 turns with 2 green runes. One of those turns was early in the game when the Golems weren’t engaged. The one turn I was engaged, I rolled two hits with 4 threat, didn’t need the re-roll

I almost suspect you've fabricated this story to make me feel good about myself, because it is exactly what I was going for. Two points of bid is pretty cool but not game breaking, four points is kind of a big deal when you need to really think about whether you'd be better off with a tempered steel, etc. Golems I often find a similar thing, they amble around for positioning, blocking and threatening lanes, then get to attack once or twice. It feels really bad when they whiff one of those attacks, so boosting the lower end of their damage is just what I want.

Thanks for the lovely feedback!

I forgot to note that when the runes weren’t “double green”, then were usually double blue or double red giving the golems lots of punch... I actually got off a distance 4 charge on initiative 4 and rolled two hits with threat 4... As you noted, your modificaiton evened out their performance a bit more...

Good survey, but a bit unsure of some of the proposed changes.

The problem with crossbows is that they got quite restrictive upgrades and a relatively high cost making them "only strong in the 3x1 formation with rank discipline + x". The other archers has some more flexibility in how you build them with innate abilities. High damage is really all the crossbows got (and mostly in that formation) but even then 2x1 of Deepwoods with tempered steel is better in damage to cost ratio.

Wording on Ardus needs tightening. The way itis written, he gives a permanent Lethal 1 to nearby units each activation. Which reads like if he does it two turns in a row, they all get a permanent lethal 2 (two instances of lethal 1 acts like lethal 2). Which is actually a really cool idea, but I think not what you intended.

Does Ankaur's auto-heal ability carry over to his infantry- and cavalry upgrades respectively? This would make his currently unusable cavalry upgrade (Death Knights only have 1 wound and can't replenish) usable.

How about Maro in cavalry champion form doesn't cause any wounds at all when using the skill? Having to dial the skill modifier on Death Knights is payment enough.

On 2/2/2019 at 10:57 AM, Datskor said:

The problem with crossbows is that they got quite restrictive upgrades and a relatively high cost making them "only strong in the 3x1 formation with rank discipline + x". The other archers has some more flexibility in how you build them with innate abilities. High damage is really all the crossbows got (and mostly in that formation) but even then 2x1 of Deepwoods with tempered steel is better in damage to cost ratio.

3x1 is certainly the most problematic, which is why I've focused my attention there. In addition to high damage it gets protected, niche mortal strike power, and amazing positional flexibility with marching cornicen. I think the 2x1 could probably use a boost of some sort, but that's a problem for much later.

As for Ankaur's champion uprade version, the change would probably be fine and low-impact, but it doesn't register as important right now. I think lots of heroes in units could use tweaking, so we'll do a pass later on once the high priority items are sorted out a bit.